Peter Scolari: Wacky inventor, gay dad, Tom Hanks' bosom buddy, and an icon of my childhood. With bonus dicks.

It's sad when you discover that one of the icons of your childhood has died.  Sadder when you discover that he died in 2021.  

Peter Scolari was short, blond, muscular, handsome -- perfect.  Born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1955, his tv career began in 1978, with some guest spots and a starring role in the short-lived Goodtime Girls, with such future stars as Annie Potts, Scott Baio, and Adrian Zmed.  It was set during World War II, so the "good time" was just a gushy tagline, like the tv shows Happy Days and..um..Good Times.

In 1980, Peter hit television fame with Bosom Buddies, pitched to the network as a "witty Billy Wilder-style buddy comedy, like Some Like It Hot."  The network only heard Some Like it Hot, and put the buddies, Peter and then-unknown Tom Hanks, in drag. They explain in the intro that it's just so they can live in an all-female residential hotel; they're heterosexual, so "it's all perfectly normal."

In the second season, they minimized the "they're guys in dresses, har har!" jokes to concentrate on the buddy-bonding.  The two became lifelong friends off-camera, too. Tom Hanks states that they were "connected at the molecular level."  Today we would call it a bromance.

 The theme song, Billy Joel's "This is My Life," was an anthem for all of the gay boys of the 1980s who fled homophobic small towns for the freedom of West Hollywood or New York:

I  don't need you to worry for me, cause I'm all right, 

I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home. 

I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life. 

Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone.

Next came episodes of Steambath, which was Loveboat at the baths, with no gay characters; Finder of Lost Loves, which was Loveboat with private detectives, with no gay characters; and Love Boat.

The next tv show I saw Peter in was Newhart (1984- 90), with Bob Newhart as the proprietor of a rustic New England bed-and-breakfast, later the host of a tv show, Vermont Today. Peter played his producer, Michael Harris, who falls in love with heiress-turned-maid Stephanie.  No beefcake -- in an interview, Peter said that he never takes his shirt off because Michael "doesn't have biceps like this"; no gay characters, and it ends horribly, when the whole series turns out to be the dream of the psychiatrist Bob Newhart in his old show. 

Still, as it bounced around the schedule with Designing Women and Kate and Allie, it provided some glimpses of gay potential, like the three buddy-bonding brothers, Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.

I didn't see much of Peter after Newhart. I was living in West Hollywood, then New York, and not interacting much in the Straight World.  He had some guest spots on Empty Nest and Burke's Law,  voiced Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, and had a starring role in Dweebs, another short-lived series about computer nerds.  Future queer-friendly comedian Kathy Griffin also appeared.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Series sounds awful, but it won two Emmies, a review calls it "the best-written kids' show on television," and it lasted for 68 episodes. Peter played the guy who shrinks kids, and Thomas Dekker, who would grow up to have a chest, played the kid who gets shrunk. 

Actually, the shrinking in the title was just to draw in audiences from the movies. Peter's character invents a lot of things: glasses that allow you to see the dead; a time machine; a brain-swapping device, a clone machine; a love drug.

More tv shows follow:Touched by an Angel, Ally McBeal, Reba, The West Wing, Commissioner Loeb in Gotham, Peter in Madoff, and then his magnum opus, Girls, 2012-17.

The Girls are in their 20s, living in New York City, and, according to wikipedia, having "post-feminist conversations around the body politic and female sexual subjecthood." 

There are various men in their lives, including Andrew Rannells, who dated Hannah in college before coming out as gay in Season 4, and Peter as Hannah's father Tad, who comes out as gay in Season 4 also, and starts dating Keith, played by Ethan Phillips.  

More after the break

Knox Gibson: Australian swimmer, model, "Hunger Games" baddie, disability advocate. With some n*de co-stars and random twinks

As of this writing Knox Gibson. aka Captain Knoxie,  is 17 years old,  so I won't be searching for n*de photos. But he's not shy about showing off his physique.

And I have some n*de photos of his co-stars, like Clemons Schick (left), and some random Australian twinks (after the break).

Knox grew up in Orange, NSW, a small town about 250 km (150 miles) from Sydney.  His first love is swimming: he was selected for the Australian Age National Championships four times, and placed for the breast stroke  (2021, 2024) and the individual medley (2023). 

He also swims for his high school, St. Stanislaus College in Bathhurst. In 2024, he represented NSW in the all-Australia School Sport Games, and won the silver medal in the breast stroke.

Knox's second love is modeling, both fashion and runway. 

In  2020, he wore Tommy Hilfinger for New York's Fashion Week.  

In 2023, the Bonds company did a "As Worn By Us" campaign, showing Australians of every age wearing their clothes.  Knox appeared as  "Age 16."

Knox moved into acting with episodes of the Australian children's shows Teddies and Creature Mania (2017). 

 Three episodes of Lap of Honor followed (2018), then starring roles in the shorts Midnight Gun (2019), about a journalist and "masked hero" tracking down kidnapped children, and Forgive Us Our Trespasses (2022), about a boy in Nazi Germany, where people with disabilities are murdered, running for his life.

He has also starred in two music videos, "Handyman" by Triple One (2020) and "The Road," by the Zela Margossian Quintet (2022), and commercials for Kmart, NSW Transport, and Breeze Singapore

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Gemstones Episode 3.1: Kelvin collects cocks, the Simpkins smirk, and Dusty Daniels flirts. With a Peruvian penis and random butts

Title: "For I Know the Plans I Have for You."  Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." I hope so, because word on the street is that this season gets very dark.

Rogers County Fair, 2000:  The teenage Jesse Gemstone is announcing a demolition derby featuring his monster truck, the Redeemer, while his parents, megachurch pastor Eli Gemstone and his wife Aimee-Leigh, argue: the Redeemer is putting butts in seats, but is this really appropriate for a Christian ministry?   What are we going to do next, sell beer?  At that moment, a muscle hunk comes by selling beer!

Eli and Aimee-Leigh's three kids look very young, but according to the fan wiki, Jesse is 19, Judy is 15, and Kelvin is 9 or 10.

While Aimee-Leigh is off smoking a cigarette, May-May, a shabbily-dressed middle-aged woman, approaches, furious: "You pretend to be all sweet and caring, but I know the truth -- what you done to my family."  She attacks; Aimee-Leigh runs through the crowd, screaming for help, but May-May catches up and hits her with a wrench. As she lies bleeding on the ground, a car hits -- May-May! 

Eli Retires: Present day. Time to introduce the main conflicts of the season.  First up: the now-elderly Eli is hanging out with his Mason-like Cape and Pistol Society. They ask how he's enjoying his retirement.  Actually, he's only semi-retired: he's writing another autobiography and taking speaking engagements, but his kids are running the church. Gulp!  His friend: "You scared your kids are gonna blow it?"  

A Cold Fish Kiss: Eli's second child, Judy, is now a famous singer.  She has just returned from a tour, and her husband BJ wants to snuggle, but she yells at him for pressuring her, gives him a "cold fish kiss," and runs out again.  Uh-oh, marital trouble.

Smut Busters: The primary conflict, judging from the amount of air time it gets: someone named Keefe is showing the youngest son, 32 or 33 -year old Kelvin, a giant novelty dildio.  He exclaims with glee, "That is gonna hurt!"  So he's abottom, and Keefe is his boyfriend, showing him their new toy.

We pan out to see kids examining a pile of s ex toys, mostly dildos and butt plugs of various sizes and shapes, intended for gay men.  Notice the "Size Queen" dildo. 

Psych!  Kelvin and Keefe are actually youth ministers, running an anti-sex toy project.  I guess: notice the t-shirts, with the name "Smut Busters" over a splatter of...jizz?   They buy out the inventory of local adult stores, to force them into bankruptcy.  Wait -- anyone know basic economics?  

The youth group kids, also in Smut Busters t-shirts, are just examining the latest haul.  Do they take the kids to the adult stores?  They wouldn't be allowed inside.  Besides,  "exposing children to sex" is a misdemeanor.  

They ask the kids and adult volunteer Taryn to join them in the Smut Buster chant: "No smut (touch nipples),  no lust (feminine hip wiggle), no coconuts (hands to waist, grimace)." No one joins in.  

After extensive research, I conclude that "coconuts" doesn't have a symbolic meaning, except maybe to evoke testicles.  It was chosen for  its near-rhyme. The chant reflects the playground phrase "no butts, no cuts, no coconuts" (no cutting in line), and its variation, "No ifs, no buts, no coconuts" (no disagreeing).

Left: coconuts

Pretending to have never seen these characters before,  I conclude that they are a gay couple: notice how Kelvin plays with Keefe's nipple, an intimacy that platonic pals would not enjoy, how Keefe gets all bitchy around Taryn, and how most of the sex toys they buy are for gay men.  They can't conceive of something used by straight men as erotic: "There's a naked lady on the box.  Keefe, I said sexy, not disgusting!" 

So the main conflicts of the season will involve the transition of power, marital problems, and coming 

Old Slow-Eyes: Then Sunday dinner at Jason's Steak House. They argue about who is responsible for the decline in church members and donations since Eli stepped down, then about church leadership: Jesse thinks that he should be the sole leader, but the others think that they should lead together. 

How closeted are Kelvin and Keefe?  They are presented as the equivalent of the other couples, Jesse/Amber and Judy/BJ;  Jesse even refers to them as a unit. Plus Kelvin displays some feminine traits that anyone would pick up on instantly.  Maybe they are out to the family, but closeted to the church.  

Jesse criticizes the Smut Buster project -- preventing truck drivers from getting "dick pills" but not doing anything to help the church.  Kelvin says that they have bought up the inventory of 16 porno shops along the I-95 corridor. Of course, they get to keep the dildos. This is a call-back to Season 2, when Jesse complained that Kelvin's God Squad, a collection of musclemen, was solely for "popping boners," his own erotic enjoyment, not to help the church.

Geography alert: The I-95 corridor  runs through South Carolina about 50 miles from the ocean. The nearest junction is an hour's drive from Charleston.  That's a long drive just to pick up some rubber dicks. 

Next on the agenda:  A wealthy donor, famous racecar driver Dusty Daniels (Shea Whigham, left) planned to bequeath his entire $200 million fortune to the church.  But now that Eli has stepped down, he will be going with the rival Simpkins family instead.  Uh-oh,  the church can't afford to lose this!

The Evil Simpkins:  The siblings visit Dusty at his private racetrack to convince him to change his mind, but he thinks that the Simpkins display more fraternal affection.  The Gemstones can't even hold hands properly (this will become important later).  

Queer code: Jesse accuses Kelvin of using Botox to maintain his youthful appearance.  Most Botox users are in their 40s and 50s, much older than Kelvin, suggesting gay-coded vanity.  Plus 85% are women.

Kelvin keeps fiddling with a ring on his wedding-ring finger, to draw viewer attention to it. Are he and Keefe actually married?

The Simpkins arrive: two brothers and a sister, about the same age as the Gemstones.  They have no trouble holding hands! Plus they are self-made millionaire pastors -- they didn't inherit a dynasty..  

Shay Simpkins flirts with Dusty, so Judy says that she also finds him hot.  Kelvin nods his agreement.  Wait - how out is he?  Dusty, openly bisexual, returns the compliment: "All y'all look good, but this ain't about looks."  Kelvin: "That's a good thing because if it were, we'd win by a mile."  They flex and posture.

Ok, Dusty says, why don't you battle for me?  In stock cars. He's putting himself in a feminine role: traditionally suitors compete for the attention of a young lady.  

Jesse against Craig Simpkins, who claims that he has no experience. Uh-oh, he means he's not experienced in the basic stock cars used in NASCAR racing.  He's an expert in the more advanced Formula 1 cars.

There isn't even a race: Jesse stalls and then spins out.  The fortune goes to the Simpkins!

Bonus: From Ayacucho, which I thought was in Brazil.  It's actually in Peru.

The Book Signing: Eli is at a bookstore, signing copies of his "definitive autobiography" -- his third. Did you mention having a gay son?  Suddenly May-May, who attacked his wife Aimee-Leigh back in 2000, hands him one of his earlier books: Y2K: When the World Goes Dark. 

In 1999. many claimsmakers worried that computers were only set up for the 1900s, so on January 1, 2000, they would all reset. Bank accounts would empty; airplanes would fall from the sky; the world would descend into chaos. Some evangelists, like Eli Gemstone, made money by connecting the Y2K bug with end-time prophecies.

Eli is not happy to see his May-May -- he has a restraining order against her.  But she needs his help.  Wait -- you storm in and throw his old book at him to ask for help?  

Later, Eli records the section of his autobiography about Y2K: when the world didn't end, he and Aimee-Leigh had to face anger and ridicule. 

More after the break

Gemstones Season 2 Finale: The Godfather, Butch and Sundance, random nude dudes, and "My love for you wil never die"

 

The series finales on The Righteous Gemstones are meant to tie up any remaining loose ends and say goodbye to the characters, so we should expect little or no plot development, just a lot of hugging: everyone who has had lost, frayed, or troubled relationships during the season, lovers, friends, parents and children, siblings, will be reconciled.

Hold on tight to the one you love the most:  A blackened stage. Suddenly a spotlight on Jesse.  He begins the country-western song "Some Broken Hearts Never Mend," by Don Williams.  Then Kelvin, lying on a platform, raising a finger to Heaven.  Then Judy and the choir, as she walks up stage.  Then all three siblings together. 

 Coffee black, cigarettes. Start the day like all the rest. 

First thing every moning that I do, is start missing you.

Some broken hearts never mend.  Some memories never end.  

Some tears will never dry.  My love for you will never die. 

Except this song is not about lost love, it's about mended hearts.  You're supposed to look at or point to a loved one. Kelvin starts out by pointing at audience stage left, obviously at Keefe, who points to himself and then back. My love for you will never die,

BJ waves, presumably at Judy.  Cut to Amber and the kids; then Baby Billy, Tiffany, and the baby; he looks back at Harmon, his no-longer estranged son; and finally Eli looks out at the audience. 

In the middle of love's embrace: Flashback to the Alaska Commercial Company, a grocery store chain with 33 locations in Alaska, mostly in rural areas. The Lissons, in hiding after their murders and attempts, are buying -- coffee to go?  Martin has them under surveillance

Left: random nude dude

Back in church, Eli looks at the band as the siblings sing the second verse together.  Then Jesse and Kelvin, looking up to heaven.

 Rendezvous in the night.

In the middle of love's embrace, I see your face

Wait -- they see God while their partners Amber and Keefe are going downtown?  Makes sense.

Cut to the Lissons in their cabin, watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where the gay-subtext bank robbers, played by Robert Redford, top photo, and Paul Newman, left, are trapped, with no escape, so they go out shooting. 

 Some broken hearts never mend.  Some memories never end.

Some tears will never dry.  My love for you will never die.

The Cycle Ninjas:  Cycle Ninjas on glittering metallic snowmobiles zoom through the woods.  

Lyle looks out the window and yells "Get the guns!"

Back at the church, the siblings point at each other. Eli smiles. 

The First Chorus: The congregation rises to sing the chorus.

We see Chad and his wife, who have been having marital problems since Season 1; Martin and his often seen, never-named wife; Judy and BJ;  Junior and Tan Man, Baby Billy and Tiffany, Amber and the kids.  Then the siblings again.  Wait, I thought the Tan Man was just Junior's assistant.  Is there a gay relationship going on back in Memphis? 

In the flashback, the Lissons get out their guns and tell each other that God believes in them: "God will see us through, for we are the Chosen."  Where on Earth did Lyle get that idea?  

More broken hearts after the break

Johnny Berchtold: I have good news and bad news. The good news is his cock.

I researched Johnny Berchtold, who plays the gay-vague or maybe canonically gay college student Richard Beck on Season 3 of Reacher.   

I have good news and bad news.

The good news: He is hung.

 

The bad news: The d*ck pic is from the movie A Hard Problem (2021).  Johnny plays a guy who tries to reconnect with his sister and recruits The Girl to help him clean out his deceased mother's house. Heteronormativity all the way down.

The good news:  In addition to Reacher, Johnny has a gay-vague role in  The Passenger (2023). Violent loose-cannon Benson (Kyle Gallner) decides to "fix" beset-upon fast-food worker  Randy (Johnny), killing his bullies, helping him stand up to his overbearing mother, and so on.

The script was heteronormative, but queer director Carter Smith had the actors push up the homoeroticism until they are almost a gay couple.  (Spoiler: one dies at the end).

The bad news: I couldn't find any other gay or gay-vague roles.

In Tiny Pretty Things (2023), his character is married to Claire (Katherine Hahn of Agatha All Along).

In spite of the whimsical pun-title, Dog Gone (2023) is about a dying guy and his dog, who is also dying.  He's probably straight, but I'm not sure: the plot synopsis was so disturbing that I just skimmed through.

In Gaslight (2021), which is about Watergate, not Victorian England, Johnny plays Jay Jennings, the estranged son of Martha Mitchell (wife of Attorney General John Mitchell).  He's married to a woman.

In spite of the whimsical title,  Life as a Mermaid (2016-2018) is a live-action drama about two mermaid sisters living among humans.  Johnny plays the Barnacle King, sort of a nerdish character with disgusting barnacles attached to his face.  He has a male sidekick, but I couldn't stomach watching long enough to determine if he is gay or gay-vague.

Fun fact: Life as a Mermaid is also a documentary about transgender people in Borneo.

The good news: Johnny is way into horror.  His instagram is full of photos of him in bloody and monster makeup, and getting Chucky as a roommate.  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

"The Other Two," Episode 1.6: Cary goes shirtless, Chase twerks, and there's enough bulges and butts for everyone

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Reacher, Episode 3.1: The man-mountain bonds with a gay college boy with a drug dealer dad, and there are plot twists and d*cks

I see that Reacher is in its third season on Amazon Prime. "When retired Military Police Officer Jack Reacher is arrested for a murder he did not commit, he finds himself in the middle of a deadly conspiracy full of dirty cops, shady businessmen, and scheming politicians."

What's the big deal?  "Crime he did not commit" has been a cliche since "The Fugitive" in 1963, and every single movie and tv show has dirty cops.  No way would I consider watching something so trite and......

...um...

...boring....um....

I mean, I can't wait to start watching.  I'm reviewing Episode 3.1, "Persuader"

Recap: Reacher (Alan Ritchson) travels from town to town, helping people with their problems, mostly requiring him to shoot machine guns, kick guys in the balls, and throw them off balconies into trash piles, then take a Trailways bus somewhere else.

Scene 1: Establishing shots of Havenhurst University in Abbotsville, Maine.  Not real places, but they could mean Bowdoin College, the safety school for lots of valedictorians.  Reacher pulls up to the Vinyl Vault downtown, grimaces, and brings his record collection in to sell.

While he's bickering with the shopkeeper, Steve (David Daniel Stewart) drives up in his pick-up truck.  Suspicious, Reacher watches as he deliberately plows into the car, pushes it into a telephone pole, kills the driver, and drags the whimpering college student Richard Beck (Johnny Berthold, below) from the back seat into his truck.

Reacher intervenes and shoots out the tires.  Steve opens fire, but Reacher shoots him in the arm and retrieves the whimpering Richard, loads him into his van, shoots a cop ("I didn't know -- I thought he was pulling a gun"), and zooms away, with more cops in hot pursuit.  The campus police?  Can they even make arrests?

Scene 2: A well choreographed chase, with a lot of sudden turns and smashed cars -- the staging must have cost a fortune.  They stop so Reacher can steal a new car.   He tells Richard to call for a ride; "tell them you're in shock and can't remember what I looked like." 

But Richard wants more help; the kidnappers could still be around.  "No.  I'm a drifter who used an unlicensed gun to kill a cop.  I gotta disappear."

"At least take me home. My dad's rich, and can help you disappear."

"Nope."

"Please?" Offer to let him screw you.

"Well, ok." 

Back story: Richard was kidnapped before, five years ago.  Dad wouldn't pay the ransom until the kidnappers cut off his ear. 

Scene 3: Establishing shot of Richard's huge Federal-style mansion, on a rocky coast.  Wait -- I swear I hear the "Dark Shadows" theme. Is this Collinwood?  Is Richard like the grandson of Barnabas Collins?

Richard tells Paulie, the hot security guard (Olivier Richters, the Dutch Giant), that it's ok, Reacher is a friend, but Paulie doesn't believe him.  Well, he could be a kidnapper.   

Reacher doesn't want to submit to a search or get his gun confiscated, but Richard bats his eyes and says "Pretty please?  For me?"  

More after the break